“Guess we won’t take no ride to-night!” I heard Abner roar out, after the shouting had for the moment died away.
“You got to have one!” came back the original voice. “It’s needful for your complaint!”
“I’ve got somethin’ here that’ll fit _your_ complaint!” bellowed the farmer, raising his gun. “Take warnin’--the first cuss that sets foot on this stoop, I’ll bore a four-inch hole clean through him. I’ve got squirrel-shot, an’ I’ve got buckshot, an’ there’s plenty more behind--so take your choice!”
There were a good many derisive answering yells and hoots, and some one again fired a pistol in the air, but nobody offered to come up on the veranda.
Emboldened by this, I stole across the room now to one of the windows, and lifting a corner of the shade, strove to look out. At first there was nothing whatever to be seen in the utter blackness. Then I made out some faint reddish sort of diffused light in the upper air, which barely sufficed to indicate the presence of some score or more dark figures out in the direction of the pump. Evidently they _had_ built a fire around in the back yard, as they said--probably starting it there so that its light might not disclose their identity.
This looked as if they really meant to tar-and-feather Abner and Hurley. The expression was familiar enough to my ears, and, from pictures in stray illustrated weeklies that found their way to the Corners, I had gathered some general notion of the procedure involved. The victim was stripped, I knew, and daubed over with hot melted pitch; then a pillow-case of feathers was emptied over him, and he was forced astride a fence-rail, which the rabble hoisted on their shoulders and ran about with. But my fancy balked at and refused the task of imagining Abner Beech in this humiliating posture. At least it was clear to my mind that a good many fierce and bloody things would happen first.
Apparently this had become clear to the throng outside as well. Whole minutes had gone by, and still no one mounted the veranda to seek close quarters with the farmer--who stood braced with his legs wide apart, bare-headed and erect, the wind blowing his huge beard sidewise over his shoulder.
“Well! ain’t none o’ you a-comin’?” he called out at last, with impatient sarcasm. “Thought you was so sot on takin’ me out an’ havin’ some fun with me!” After a brief pause, another taunt occurred to him. “Why, even the niggers you’re so in love with,” he shouted, “they ain’t such dod-rotted cowards as you be!”